Observing The Chevalier de Balibari, expat Irishman, professional gambler and suspected spy in the service of the Empress of Austria, as he cheats at card games, assisted by fellow conniving countryman and social climbing, would-be nobleman, Barry (formerly Redmond) Lyndon, Esq., in the 1975 film Barry Lyndon, the Outstanding cinematic masterpiece, starring Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, and Patrick Magee, loosely based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, directed by His Excellency Stanley Kubrick. Upon their meeting, says the movie’s narrator, “The Chevalier was as much affected as Barry at thus finding one of his countrymen. For he too was an exile from home, and a friendly voice, a look, brought the old country back to his memory again.”

Appreciating the unique and Outstandingly erotic Excellence of German actor and writer Helmut Berger, as photographed by His Excellency Helmut Newton, standing before a mirrored fireplace, admiring his reflection, in Beverly Hills in 1984. Berger, a muse of Italian director Luchino Visconti (star of the films The Damned and Ludwig, about the “mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria), is also Excellently bisexual (a former lover of Marisa Berenson as well of, reportedly, Mick and Bianca Jagger, and many other rock stars of the 70s and 80s) and is the only man ever shot nude by Newton. “I was never interested in naked men,” the legendary photographer once told the journalist Joel Stratte-McClure. “I’ve done quite a lot of nudes of myself. When I’m in a hotel room and bored I’ll get a camera and shoot myself in the mirror. But I haven’t shown many and I”m getting a bit old for that.”